


Things That Never Were

by Arathe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 05:22:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arathe/pseuds/Arathe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dave goes to confront a couple of asshole juggalos on the roof of the White House, he spots an impossibly familiar face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things That Never Were

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the recent update and something I just needed to get out of my system.

Your first thought when you catch a flash of blue in your periphery is _he’s older than I remember._

Not _he’s real,_ which would make more sense. Not even the more practical _right now are you fucking kidding me?_ Maybe it’s the adrenaline; the razor calm of a too-familiar dance that spawns such an inane reaction. The part of you that isn’t focused wholly on your opponents wants to laugh.

_(and laugh and laugh and laugh until you cry because he’s real he’s real you fucking knew it)_

You want to stop, call a timeout, _something._ You want to grab that boy in the glasses watching you with impossible eyes, sit him down and ask him all the questions that have been plaguing you your entire life. Except you’ve got a couple of juggalos to kill, and they don’t look like they’re inclined to wait while you sort out your existential crisis with a teenager in blue pajamas.

_(he’s real jesus fuck Rose never believed not really and that always seemed wrong seemed like she should be the one to know e v e r y t h i n g)_

They’re no real match for you, but you expected that. Your eyes find him between one slash and the next, note the way he watches the head go sailing by.

You might be showing off a bit.

It’s over quickly, nothing but bodies on the ground, wind in your ears, and the drip drip drip of blood from your blade. You roll your shoulders, turn, a hundred thousand questions on your lips.

_(what’s your name how do I remember you who are you to fit into this boy-shaped hole in my heart will you stay will you make me whole how can i miss you so badly when I don’t even know who you are)_

He’s gone.

Something inside you rends, and you can only stand and stare at the spot where he was and wonder if you’ve lost your mind.

_(Rose would answer in long clinical terms laced with understanding but a yes is a yes no matter how prettily said)_

All at once, every burden, every fear, every disjointed memory-dream-memory of a boy with blue eyes and another life lived press down on you with crushing weight. You’re barely winded but exhausted nonetheless, and it’s all you can do to keep your feet. You should move, should go, you know it’s too dangerous to stay here but you can’t bring yourself to move. All you can do is stare at the spot where, for the space of a long breathless minute, the answer to your everything had been.

_(primal knowledge that he was yours even though you're strangers even though he’s a boy and you’re a man and it’s all slipslide backwards and wrong and how can you be so in love with a phantom a falsehood he was RIGHT THERE)_

You stand where he stood, and when the wind stirs your hair it hurts for reasons you can’t define. You tell yourself you aren’t crazy.

_(you’re probably wrong)_

You tell yourself that what you’re doing matters.

_(you’re probably wrong)_

You’ll fight until you can’t, because there’s nothing else. No other choice.

_(blood blood it all ends in blood you know you’re going to die you’ve accepted it but maybe at the end there’ll be blue eyes and the home always longed for but never real)_

You’re probably wrong.


End file.
